TAO LIN | BLOG

7/16/07

interviews

interview with tony o'neill by tao lin

interview with tao lin by tony o'neill

the bear and the needle on dogmatika

17 Comments:

jereme said...: Tony doesn't have heroin urges because the Kratom attaches to the opiod receptors although it's not an opiate.

I'm curious where he bought it.

Tao,

You're a decent interviewer.; 6:40 PM
Billy said...: I didn't delete my blog. I hid it. I have to edit. I feel stupid.; 6:55 PM
Nicholas Manning said...: Tao, I like your writing and I like Tony O'Neill's. But is depressed now the new black? I thought we were over the personal biograph reliance in the cred stakes. I suppose I felt like I was reading less a lit interview than a fucking intervention. Good thing for you maybe? Maybe that's valid. Why? I'm not downing, I'm just asking.

And where's your vid for The Continental Review. Buy a camera already.

Word.; 7:10 PM
Tao Lin said...: nicholas,

i don't understand your question; 10:39 PM
Nicholas Manning said...: I was just interested in the biographical focus, which seemed to me excessive, but less so now.

so I retract; 6:09 AM
ryan said...: I went to a comedy show last night and met rebecca curtis, and she had copies of her book, and I bought one, having recalled reading about it on your blog this last week, and I told her that's why I bought it, because I read about it here, and she wrote in my book that she likes tao + i like tao, I think she said loves tao, but it might have been like, I forget, I'll look later.thank you for the inadvert. reco!; 8:41 AM
Miles Newbold Clark said...: Tao Lin, Tony O'Neil and myself have suddenly conquered the Word Riot interviews section. Hurrah!

But how do you think you'll do, Tao, in Zungia's corner, "battling" against a person you interviewed, who is in the corner of the magazine for which you edit?

A philosopher said: "I hear, I forget. I see, I know. I do, I understand."

One can construe publication as "seeing" (certainly, except in rare cases, in first world countries, it represents a visual rather than an oral presence) and editing as at least more quasi-physical (performing actions) than visual.

By extension: do you believe you know more than you understand?; 11:05 PM
Tao Lin said...: i'm going to beat tony's face in with the other end of his syringe; 1:08 AM
Tao Lin said...: nice review of a public space, miles

A Public Space
Number 3

Winter 2007

Quarterly

Reviewed by Miles Clark

For those who enjoyed the first two issues of A Public Space, get ready for more of the same. The journal has settled into a steady routine: its “If You See Something, Say Something” department contains a mélange of cultural criticism and ruminations on environmental changes; its comics confront the potential disunity of strict cultural roles; its poetry is experimental and edgy. It’s the poetry which is most improved, particularly Eugene Ostashevsky’s “DJ Spinoza” and Anne Carson’s “Zeus Bits” (the latter a series of lighthearted fragments worthy of Fence). In fiction, Martha Cooley’s “Month Girls” features three word processors (April, May and June) telling the stories of their names to an orphaned coworker; the arbitrariness of a name provides a smooth segue into emotional indifference.

A Public Space first achieved notoriety for what it was not: a continuation of The Paris Review. While TPR has swiftly reinvented itself with an eye towards the exigencies of a new century, A Public Space has been no less forthright in establishing itself as a University of Iowa satellite. Of its five contributing editors, three –Aviya Kushner, Yiyun Li, and Antoine Wilson – are Iowa products; its debut issue featured fiction from alums Charles D’Ambrosio and Peter Orner; Marilynne Robinson, Iowa’s oft-lauded instructor, proffered an argument for writing fiction. Issues two and three have each “introduced” the fiction of a newly-minted Iowa grad. Alum Daniel Alarcón serves as co-editor of this issue’s “focus” section.

Brigid Hughes once claimed that it was “hard” to think of good writers from this generation who had not attended an MFA program. Apparently, the greater challenge is to create a list of schools beyond Iowa where that writing is produced. In this issue's most amusing segment, Ben Erenreich suggests that the rise of animal attacks on humans is no fluke, but a coordinated retaliatory effort to curb manmade environmental destruction. As A Public Space becomes an institution, one begins to wonder if Erenreich’s apprehension has less to do with animals, and more with the fortunes of this particular journal, particularly after the reading public discovers that its doors are bolted shut.
http://www.apublicspace.org; 1:13 AM
Tao Lin said...: ryan, i think i saw you, but i wasn't completely sure.

i think i saw you talking to rebecca curtis, what comedy show? i think i saw you at her reading, at mo pitkins or something.

was that you?

it was in mo pitkins, on the second floor.; 1:44 AM
ryan said...: yes. mo pitkins. mo pitkins house of satisfaction. i spoke to rebecca very briefly. 15 seconds maybe. so yea, you probably did see me. the comedy show was called TV Book Club. It was pretty fucking hillarious, I thought. Todd Levine hosted it. Did you see that show? Or did you just see the reading before that? I wasn't aware there was a reading before or I would have gone earlier.; 8:32 AM
The Man Who Couldn't Blog said...: Please thank Tony O'Neill for reminding me to look up Ornette Coleman on Youtube. I woner what Milton Berle thought.; 12:21 PM
Tao Lin said...: tv book club, i don't know what that is

i came for the rebecca curtis reading, you mean you just saw her by accident?; 4:33 PM
ryan said...: yes. purely by acident. just went for a comedy show. she just happened to be there for a reading at the same place, right before the next show at mo pitkins, the one i intended ot see. same week i read about her on your blog, or i would never have even heard of that book. i saw it on a table when i walked in and was like, hmmm, tao just wrote about that. then i bought one because you just wrote about it. random. no idea. no idea she was there or that her book was there or that you were there. same time. shrug.; 4:42 PM
ryan said...: small world; 4:48 PM
Tao Lin said...: that is funny, you just walked in and went 'hmm.'

good.; 4:58 PM
ryan said...: mmmmmm hmmmmm; 5:31 PM